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The cover design alone indicates that Tracy Wolff was trying to reach a specific audience for her bestselling young adult series. After seeing the cover of Crave, I immediately thought of Twilight, as did most other readers. The iconic black covers with a lone symbol are very well known in pop culture, so the cover of Crave was fairly eye catching. Even more so when you read on to discover it’s another young adult vampire series. While it’s arguable that the vampire craze and incredible vampire market saturation died shortly after the release of the final Twilight films, many young adult authors are actively working to bring it back, including Tracy Wolff.
The Crave series is one of the newest, most popular young adult series on the market. The first book, Crave, released in April of 2020 and since then, two more sequels have been released. The final book in the quartet is due to release in September of this year. The series has become incredibly popular on social media, but I had some hesitation. This cover looks like a direct mock of the Twilight covers, so I needed to know if this was just a Twilight wannabe. It’s not (really).
Crave follows a recently orphaned teen, Grace. After the death of her parents, she is sent to an isolated boarding school in Alaska to live with her uncle, the headmaster, and her cousin, a fellow student. Within her first few minutes at the school, she meets some strangely intriguing people, including a mysterious, broody boy (duh). While she continues trying to get used to the cold, darkness of Alaska, she is (somehow) completely unaware of what truly crawls the halls of her new school.
How was it?
The description alone was a sigh. As an avid young adult reader, this doesn’t seem like a particularly special or interesting plot, because it isn’t. It’s another take on “innocent, shy girl goes to a new school and catches everyone’s attention (seemingly for no reason) that ultimately leads to an angsty love triangle”. *Twilight enters the chat* It’s been done. The main character, Grace, was nearly insufferable. She was somehow completely oblivious to the fact that she is the only human in the entire school. She also became near obsessed with her first love interest within the first few chapters. Come on, girl. None of the side characters were particularly compelling, either.
In the end, there wasn’t anything particularly moving about this book. It employs a theme that everyone’s seen and read a million times over, the writing style was simple, and the main character was either incredibly naïve or stupid. This book was simply “meh.” If you’re bored and want to revisit the overdone love triangle trope, maybe try it. It was certainly entertaining, but it is not the new Twilight.
Crave is available as print book, ebook, and audiobook. These can be found at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Audible, along with most booksellers.
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